Faculty Profiles in Excellence

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It is a true pleasure to work with our outstanding transplant team, participate in life altering treatments for our patients and continue to improve the quality of kidney transplantation.

Jane Tan, MD, PhD

Medicine – Nephrology

My area of clinical expertise is in kidney transplantation. In addition to taking care of kidney transplant recipients, I evaluate patients with end stage kidney disease for potential kidney transplantation and also evaluate healthy individuals who wish to become living kidney donors. When I came to Stanford ten years ago, the average waiting time for kidney transplantation in the Bay Area was 3-4 years. Now it has increased to 6-8 years. This is because of the continuous rise in chronic kidney disease without a parallel increase in organ supply. The largest increase in chronic kidney disease has been in the older population. Similarly, there has been a steady increase in the age of kidney donors. It was evident that a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the age associated decline of kidney function would have a direct clinical application to organ selection and allocation and this has been the focus of my patient oriented research. Our research has contributed to a successful increase in the deceased donor pool by using carefully selected kidneys from older donors. Similarly, many older individuals in good health wish to donate a kidney to a loved one but often do not pass the stringent screening tests for kidney donation. Some argue that in the face of severe organ shortage, our current guidelines are too stringent. By carefully selecting non-traditional living kidney donors, we hope to establish better guidelines for donor selection so as to maximize the donor pool without increasing the risk of long-term donor safety. It is a true pleasure to work with our outstanding transplant team, participate in life altering treatments for our patients and continue to improve the quality of kidney transplantation.